bigger bimac

marineboy

Wonderpus
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Dec 30, 2005
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184
I caught this bimac on the same day as the one I posted before. He is slightly bigger as you can see

0836980-R1-033-15.jpg

0836980-R1-035-16.jpg
 
I am green with envy.....How I wish I was out collecting food and octopuses!!!! Did you release him? He's beautiful.

Carol
 
I would be thrilled if you would enlighten me on how you catch bimacs, what habitat to look for, when to go out on the flats, etc. I think at the end of April I'll be in the Monterey area for around a week, and I would love to go tide pool hoping for bimacs. I'll be poking around anyways, but if I needed nets or buckets (well clearly...) or something else for bimacs please let me know. I'm just going to be catching and releasing as well. Very exciting stuff!

Cheers!

PS: Great pics! Keep 'em coming!
 
main_board said:
I would be thrilled if you would enlighten me on how you catch bimacs, what habitat to look for, when to go out on the flats, etc. I think at the end of April I'll be in the Monterey area for around a week, and I would love to go tide pool hoping for bimacs. I'll be poking around anyways, but if I needed nets or buckets (well clearly...) or something else for bimacs please let me know. I'm just going to be catching and releasing as well. Very exciting stuff!

Cheers!

PS: Great pics! Keep 'em coming!

I think most of the Monterey area is marine preserve, so you're not allowed to remove any animals. Of course, if you find an octo, you could still play with it a bit... I thought bimacs don't get that far north, though, although there are o. rubescens and GPOs around. I haven't seen any in tide pools, though. My favorite tide pools are about an hour's drive north of Monterey: Fitzgerald Marine Reserve (- Friends of Fitzgerald Marine Reserve) -- they have an octo pic on their home page, so that's promising, but I've never found one there (but maybe with tips from marineboy you'd be able to!) But there they definitely don't allow removal of any animals.

Even where the animals are not protected, I believe you need a fishing license or collecting permit to keep any animal you catch, so you may want to look into that.

edit: I just decided since I don't really know what the rules are for collecting bimacs on the California coast, I could ask, so I fired off an email to the California Department of Fish and Game, thinking if they can give me the details, I could write a short article about "regulations regarding octopus collecting in California"-- perhaps I could team up with marineboy or others to also include good locations to try this, how to find bimacs, and the like...
 
I live in San Diego County, And if you want to know when how and where to catch bimacs, im an expert in my area. Some people down at the beach are so fascinated they say I should start tours...anyway, You want to go out on as low a tide as possible, you probably since your a new timer will want to go only if its -0.3 or lower, although i have found them at tides as high as +0.87.

Once you have your date, you want to make sure you have a location. They like actual reefs, no just tidepools with sand and rock, they like rocks covered in seaweed and such. If you look at the pics I showed, you can see that there is lots of kelp and shells around it, living organisms everywhere.

Ok, now that you have your place and your time, head out to your spot. People ask me every time im out on the reef, "how do you do it?" because they look all day and can't find one. The reason is is that you have to get pretty down and dirty to find them if you know what i mean. You may be uninterested now but all i mean is above there gentle glares into the tidepools (believe me thats all they do and they expect to see everything on the tidepool sign when walking in). What you want to do is look for good rocks that are covered and well adapted into the reef (that means covered in small crabs, shrimp, kelp, and so forth), The ultimate rocks are the rocks that form small caverns in the tidepools, but I have found them under flat ones so dont be to picky and just flip rocks like crazy but be very careful when putting them back because you dont want to disturb anything else under the rock. While your flipping rocks, you will probably encounter many other small animals that after so many times at the tidepools dont thrill me anymore but they might for you.heres a list...

various species of small shrimp
baby lobsters
brittle stars
bat stars
tidepools schulphins-small fish that look like mudskippers, VERY common amongst the tidepools
sea hares (sea slugs)- gauranteed you'll find one of these
wavy top shells /w hermits in them (sometimes)
rock crabs
red crabs
ochre stars
giant sea stars

thats all i can think of but there more. its a blast flipping those rocks, but make sure you bring reef shoes and just in case wear swim trucks because sometimes a wave may nick ya when you dont notice. I bring a small net that can get into small nooks and cranny but primarily I use my hands for the octo's because they are deadly fast and are easy to lose sight of, so don't go thinking its an easy task! Have fun!!!

~Mike
 
What an interesting post!

I had always wondered what the bimac's habitat was like. Do you think you could possibly get some pics of the rocks and of the many creatures you find? I've often thought it would be nice to set up a bimac tank that would be more like the habitat they're used to. It strikes me as strange sometimes that my bimac lived in and on Fuji live rock.

Nancy
 
And the octos don't bite, even when they are being pursued in the wild? Or are they pretty small to be taking on something like a hand? Very interesting. Thanks for all the details.
 
after all my experiaence I have never had one bite me, and octopus don't use there beaks for defense unlike squid, its primarily used for feeding.
 
marineboy said:
after all my experiaence I have never had one bite me, and octopus don't use there beaks for defense unlike squid, its primarily used for feeding.

From what I hear, O. Rubescens do bite defensively (or offensively!) a lot, even though Bimacs, and many other species, don't so much. (Fortunately, blue rings are also not very agressive with their bites...)
 

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